Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1887-10-29
IT IS NOT BUSINESS
PRENTICE MILFORD TELLS WHY
MEN DO NOT SUCCEED.

Time Spent In Aimless and Unnecessary
Taik-EfYect Of Worry ON the system.
Carrying Losd-Cheating Other
Psople-At Loose Ends.
yon'n excuse me, l trust, for saying 30,
ouI l dont see any sense or any use in
your being overwhelmed with business
You should not let anything oyerwhelm
you. You're the worse off for being over
whelmed by anything. The fact is, more
than half you do n spend your time and
struggle on isn't business at all. You'll
stand and talk with a man for half an
hour when neither Of you nave anything
to say, and when you're through you'll
suddenly recollect that you're too late for
your train or your interviews with some
body else. Then you rush of in a hurry.
You carry hurry with you. You infect
everybody with it you meet. You carry
on your interviews in a hurry, thinking
all the time Of the next thing you've got
TO do. You leave the business concerned
in that interview about half done, because
you were not able to fix or center your
mind wholly on 1t. You leave business
with tags and loose ends. You are
always in q fret n worry because Of the
consequences of your hurried state of
mind-and you call this "business."
You have 'forty things to think of and
do at once. You shouldn't have forty
thing to do at once. You should have
only one thing to do at once. That's bust
ness. You mislay things. You forget
things. You tuck important papers away
in ~unimportant and obscure rat holes
hardly conscious Of what you're doing.
You lose minutes, hours and strength in
looking for them. You call that business.
All of your mistakes and worries you dig
nifty by the name Of business. You get
IN a worry and a hurry and forget where
you've laid your hat, and you call the
hunting Of that hat "busincss." Well, it
Is business, but it's the wrong kind of
business. You get your thread in a tangle
instead of a properly wound ball and you
call the tangle business. You carry q
tang.e around with you in your head and
call 1T business. You carry your tangle
to bed with you. You think it over and
over. The same old tangle all night, in
stead OF sleeping rs you should to get
strength for tomorrow, and you call that
business" Real business is making a
business Of sleep when the time comes to
tleep n not going to work when you
should go to sleep. You've no more bust
ness carrying your work to bed with you
than a wood sawyer has to carry his saw
and buck to bed with him.
You're a worry and a pressure and a
nuisance at times to your friends and
those who are trying to be your friends in
always talking about the load you have to
carry In your business. The less of a load
business is to a man the better he does
business. II you're a horse jockey and it's
a pleasure for you to sell horses, you'll
sell horses and possibly sell the people you
sell them to. Blu II it's q load n q worry
lad an annoyance for you to sell horses,
then you won't sell many. The more a
man loves his work the less of a load it is
to him end the better he succeeds in his
work. The thing that's hest done is the
thing or act that gives most pleasure in
the doing. A live salesman loves to sell
goods. A dead salesman who looks like o
funeral when he's selling goods and
mourns while selling them that he must
sell them won't sell many goods. Your
idea of business" for the last ten years
has been the borrowing of $4,000 from
anybody who was simple enough to lend
it to you to ''start the business" You
will then in three years time spend SO, 600
on yourself, lose the other $1,000 and
WIND up with nothing.
You had no idea Of doing any one "a
wrong or deceiving any one. But when
you got the money you cheated yourself
into the delusion that your W expenses
were a very necessary part Of the bust
ness and you were tempted to enlarge the
expenses. You're always In this way
chasing q phantom and getting out Of one
business into another. Your real business
De- tLnt - 1,ctnD nthar yaa,1nta r1nnnu
Your real business is that Of cheating other
people into your own delusions. You are
the most dangerous of all ~swindlers, be-
cause you are really honest and a believer
in your own swindle. You see millions
in it," and magnetic other people in see
ing your own shadowy millions. You
have considerable ability as n talker, a
reasoner, a prevailer. You are the man
who car make others see a gold mine in a
hill of barren rock. You are the man who
can cover in imagination e mud tlat or
sand waste with a full built town and
make corner lots worth thousands before
the stakes are driven and while the frogs
are concerting upon them.
When you are talking business you
don't talk to the center, the pith, the rule
of the thing. You don't aim at any bulls
eye. You hum I'M haw, and talk all
round the board, and eli round what
you've got to say or to propose, because
you're afraid to say it. You never know
exactly what you want yourself. OF
course you can't then make others know
what you want. That's one reason why
SO many times you get nothing at all.
You lose too much time in feeling around
and taking soundings. When the main
channel is marked and buoyed out straight
before, and that channel Is the talking
straight out Of what you want to do to
the other man, il he'll do it, well and
good; IL he won't, he won't, and there's
an end of it. More real business can be-
done in five minutes than you do some
times in five hours.
You'd get along and do well II you
didn't carry your brains as loosely as you
do your papers in our hat. Your brains,
like your papers, are always flying away
when you take your hat off. You're a
cyclone, you are-plenty of force, wind,
which could, properly applied, sail a ship
or run q windmill; but the way you let it
on tears things all to piSses-including
yourself. Prentice Milford in San Fran
cisco Chronicle.